20-21 November 2025, University of Fribourg (Switzerland)

This conference aims to explore the history of students through their regional, religious, national and international organisations in the second half of the twentieth century. The aim is to examine the student agency through the analysis of their social profile, the forms of material or symbolic compensation for their commitment, and the circulation of knowledge about the economic and social situation of the students.

The history of students has been approached through two overlapping frameworks: chronological and thematic. There is a historiography that covers the long 19th century up to the Second World War, in which historians were mainly interested in this social group through the study of its social characteristics, venues, and rituals - in a word, its identity. The approach used for this period, i.e. to look at the institutions created and governed by students, their ways of identifying themselves and organising their lives, has remained overlooked in the study of student life during the Cold War. For this early period, such methods like comparison (Dubois, 2021; Levsen, 2008) or global, imperial and/or postcolonial history (Laqua, 2011; Löhr, 2021; Legrandjacques, 2021) have proved their worth in studies focused on the early 19th century and could be further analysed in the relation with the post-1945 period. 

When studying the second half of the twentieth century, historians focused mainly on students as a fundamental driving force to explain major social movements, the emergence of a globalised mass culture, especially in the context of the “long 1960s”, or to illustrate the evolution of development policies through scholarship schemes and the growth of academic mobility.

This conference aims to explore the history of students through their regional, religious, national and international organisations in the second half of the twentieth century, using certain approaches generally used for the previous period. The goal is not to scrutinise the official language and organisational structures but the social profile of the students, the forms of material or symbolic reward for their commitment, and the circulation of knowledge about the economic and social situation of the students. While taking into account the geopolitical context of the Cold War and the youth movements of the 1960s, we want to pay more attention to the emergence of the mass university on the one hand and decolonisation on the other. This conference will provide a more precise overview of practices and actions carried out by students, while focusing less on discourse.

We therefore give priority to the papers on:

• East-West or North-South comparison in the history of international and national student organisations;
• The participation of students, through their local, national or international organisations, in ‘development’ policies (literacy campaigns, support for the democratisation of studies);
• Local commitment to global, progressive or reactionary causes (anti-/feminism, anti-/racism, anti-/colonialism, inter-/nationalism). 

The conference focuses on the second half of the twentieth century, but diachronic comparisons, as are sociological approaches to the present with a historical dimension, are also welcome. 

The conference is part of the project From Student Internationalism to Erasmus (funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Czech Science Foundation) whose members form the scientific committee.

Dates and places

Dates: 20-21 November 2025

Place: University of Fribourg (Switzerland)

Submission guidelines

Please send a summary of your paper (up to 500 words) and a short CV to Dr Lidia Lesnykh (lidia.lesnykh@unifr.ch)

by 1 May 2025.

Applicants will be notified on the 1st of June.

Travel and accommodation costs are, in principle, at the participants’ own expense. Where necessary, we will do our best to help colleagues without financial support.

Information: Prof. Matthieu Gillabert (matthieu.gillabert@unifr.ch)

Scientific Committe

• Pr. Matthieu Gillabert, Professor of Contemporary history, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
• Dr. Mikuláš Pešta, Sssistant professor, Institute of World History at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Czechia
• Dr. Lidia Lesnykh, Postdoc in Contemporary history, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
• Martin Pácha, Ph.D. candidate, Institute of Czech History at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Czechia
• Timothy Schürmann, Ph.D. candidate in Contemporary history, University of Fribourg, Switzerland

Cited works

Dubois Antonin, Organiser les étudiants. Socio-histoire d’un groupe social (Allemagne et France, 1880-1914), Paris, Le pupitre, 2021.

Laqua Daniel (eds.), Internationalism reconfigured: transnational ideas and movements between the World Wars, London, I.B.Tauris, 2011 (International library of twentieth century history 34).

Legrandjacques Sara, Voies étudiantes : pour une histoire globale des mobilités étudiantes en Asie (Inde britannique - Indochine française, années 1850-1940), PhD Dissertation, Paris 1, 2021.

Levsen Sonja, « Constructing Elite Identities: University Students, Military Masculinity and the Consequences of the Great War in Britain and Germany », Past & Present (198), 2008, pp. 147‑183.

Löhr Isabella, Globale Bildungsmobilität 1850-1930: von der Bekehrung der Welt zur globalen studentischen Gemeinschaft, Göttingen, Wallstein Verlag, 2021.